Trump’s Family Business, CFO Are Expected To Be Charged On Thursday In New York

The Manhattan district attorney’s office is expected to bring charges against former President Donald Trump’s family business and its longtime chief financial officer on Thursday, NPR has confirmed.

CFO Allen Weisselberg, who oversaw day-to-day management of the Trump Organization while the former president was in the White House, is expected to face criminal charges for allegedly paying employees off the books to avoid taxes. Among the benefits the Trump Organization is said to have paid for are cars, apartments and private school tuition.

“These are really expensive fringe benefits we are talking about here,” says Duncan Levin, an attorney for Weisselberg’s former daughter-in-law, Jennifer Weisselberg. “These are multi-million dollar apartments, tuitions to the most expensive private schools in the world, renovations of marble and other high-end appliances. The core of this is serious.”

Trump has denied wrongdoing. The office of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. and Weisselberg’s personal lawyer, Mary Mulligan, declined to comment on the expected indictment. The Trump Organization’s attorneys and Trump’s personal attorney did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Vance has been conducting a wide-ranging investigation of possible protracted criminal fraud by the Trump Organization. The probe was launched around the time Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer, pleaded guilty in 2018 to campaign finance charges tied to “hush money” used to silence women who claimed to have had extramarital affairs with Trump.

In 2019, the New York state attorney general’s office started a separate investigation into Trump’s real estate transactions that has since been working in cooperation with Vance’s probe.

In recent months, investigators have been focusing on non-cash payments made to Weisselberg and other top officials in Trump’s companies.

The expected timing of the charges was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

NPR national correspondent Hansi Lo Wang contributed to this story.